Since they are under the same company, their liability to you and to other BTC-central customer should be same and treated equally. Hope this calms you a little bit.
I doubt that would fly. As I recollect things, ~davout just picked Instawallet up from ~jav when he lost interest as a side project 'because it was so cool', and mostly just let it run.
I used it because I liked the simplicity and not having to provide an e-mail addy. I also liked that they were straight-up about their warnings vis-a-vis security.
Up until a few days ago, I had around 40 BTC there. Back when that was around $100 bucks it didn't bother me much, but at $4000 it became a bigger source of concern to me. So I sent half to my fossilized Mt. Gox account and put them up for sale at around $150, then gave a few more away. So, if they've gone tit's up or flat out stolen my money (which is the same net effect to me) all I can say is that it could have been worse. Losing all the value I had with them is certainly not something I thought unlikely.
